The Beginning of the End

War. War never changes.

Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing path with rock
and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God, to justice, to simply
psychotic rage.

In the year 2062, after millenia of armed conflict, the destructive nature of man could sustain
itself no more. The world was plunged into an abyss of nuclear fire, mutation, and radiation.

But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was just the
prologue to another bloody chapter of human history. For man had succeeded in destroying the
world.

But war... War never changes.


---


It was New Year's day when it all happened. The world had no idea exactly what was going to be
ringing in the new year, though. Instead of a fat kid in diapers with a sash, it was the Grim Reaper
who brought it in. That day, everything went to shit. All across the world, spread across every
single continent, there were these labs. Preparing for one big science experiment, to link
together all of humanity. No more war, no more hatred, no more individuality.

So much for that.

They tapped into something no human had tapped into before. Another dimension, perhaps. Maybe
heaven. Maybe hell. Whatever it was, it was just plain fucking wrong. All across the globe,
the labs more or less exploded, sending waves of what is now known as 'FES particles' far and wide.
FES, short for Forced Evolutionary Syndrome, settled over huge tracts of land, and did horrible things
to everything it touched.

Plants grew wild and carnivorous, animals mutated into horrors, and the elemental forces twisted
and churned, creating these objects that were like magic. In this day and age, these areas
so touched by FES are known as Zones.

If only the birth of the Zones was all that came from that day.

There were over a dozen nuclear powers in the world, and all of them had ways to detect incoming
missile strikes. Unfortunately, they all detected the outbursts from the Labs as nuclear attacks.
Whether from machine error, or even intentional malice from the source of the FES, everyone with
the nuke saw this as an opportunity to tear at eachother's throats.

One day. One day was all it took for most of the world to be baptised in nuclear fire, purging
billions of lives from this world and turning so many of the creations of man into dust in the wind.
Society fell apart nearly overnight, the sun grew cold for a long, long time, and demons mutated
by radiation and FES stalked the night.

In time, the dust cleared, and man truely saw for the first time what had become of Earth.

It was a shithole.

Now, the year is 2112. Precisely fifty years to the day since what has become known as the Great
Emission, so named after the initial eruption of FES into this world. The labs continue pumping
FES into the Zones, though noone is certain how. Humanity has banded together into loose tribes and
communities, trying to find a way to survive. Mutants roam the abandoned highways. Bandits terrorize
the Wasteland. And Stalkers hunt for the remains of human civilization, scavenging for treasures
of the past.

Welcome to the Wasteland. Hope you like misery and radiation.